Episode #341 – Heart Issues

(M) What is the verse? “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” In my heart I came to know that I was dissatisfied with what I had been given. (J) Hmmm. (M) In my heart I was honest about it, but it’s only what it should be. It’s no credit to me. I wanted God more than I wanted anything anybody had, and didn’t… (J) So is discontentment the platform that jealousy can grow off of? (M) Well said. I wouldn’t have put it… Discontent is the primal sin of humanity. But you say it’s the platform on which jealousy is built. Yes! Very well said. Paul said something that I believe is… He said I’m jealous of you. I’m jealous over you with a jealous love. I have espoused you to One Husband. So if you’re a man of the Spirit, and a man obedient and under God, then you can experience the jealousy of God. God is jealous. He wants to be our source. He’s jealous to be our source. He’s jealous to be our Father. He’s jealous of our love, of wanting… He was jealous of my wanting a mother for twenty-five years when I didn’t have one. And so He chastened me sorely because of His jealousy. See, His jealousy is very powerful. And you can be, you can sense His jealousy. You can be a vessel to sense His jealousy over someone. So there is a spiritual side to that, but that’s not at all what’s in this human that becomes so satanic. (J) It’s like each brick is a thought supporting your discontent. And then it becomes a jealousy and puts a wall between you and really, everyone and you and God. (M) Exactly. (J) And you and your true self. It really blocks you in. You are literally imprisoned with jealousy. All those thoughts that you think literally, you know, build a wall around you and you can’t even get to know yourself. That’s the fascinating thing about being alive is the fact of developing who you are in God. That’s the fascinating part of being alive. And to be discontent, which I have been; I have been so discontent about things. It has… But those very discontentments have justified my bitterness to myself, and justified my self-indulgences, and ah, Lord Jesus! (M) It justifies things that you allow yourself to have that you don’t need. (J) Yeah, it gives me the right to go be, be… it gave me license. It gave justification and gave me the right to go and give me license to do what I wanted to do, because I was ‘due’. But I, I don’t want, I don’t want the license and the justification of being bitter. I want to go and I want to find out who God has made me be, what my story is, who I am, and I don’t want to be in that prison of locked in those thoughts and… It’s a torment! It’s a demonic torment. Not only does it hurt those that you’re jealous about, it hurts you. (M) Yes. (J) You are killed. And I, I don’t want to be in a, in a locked up prison. (M) And see John, it’s like this friend of mine is a tragedy to me. I would love to have known what God would have done with her had she been willing to be His and be content. There’s no telling what greatness. There’s no knowing. We’re sure the story was an illustration and it was exactly as it was supposed to have been, but I write about it, about Saul and David in “All And Only”, that Saul was to train David, but he had to do so negatively, how not to be a king. And so, but this woman taught me how not to lead women. I do know that’s how I knew about Saul and David. I learned that is not how you do it, that’s terrible. I’m not willing to lead women at the expense of their well-being, and their integrity as a person. No one else had any worth but her. And so she was my Saul. And I’ve learned much from her that I’m not even telling. So, it was just as it was with David. David became who he was through the oppression of jealousy. And the marvelous thing to me right now is I’m understanding how much God wins. He takes you… Now we’ll go to a sovereign side of this. God takes you and brings people into your life, allows them to come in, maybe shred you, maybe rob you, maybe decimate you, pound you, ah, torment you as David was tormented. But he grew closer and closer to the Lord, and in the end became the magnificent man he was because he saw, he experienced what it was like to be at the hands of evil. And it has its purpose. Part of it is to say, no, I will not be shredded at your hand. I will not, you will not be, you will not displace my God and control me. Basically it’s the enemy’s ‘rob, kill and destroy’. And it’s, it is very real and very experiential for God’s people. I’ve seen it come at you. I’ve seen enormous jealousy come at you. There was ah, someone that came to take your place and to get you out. And God didn’t allow it. So it’s a very devious, terrible thing the enemy does when he has a vessel, who was willing to be jealous. (J) But this, I just, I mean the only warning that I can say is, deal with your discontentment. That when you harbor those thoughts, that is just setting yourself up for a fall. (M) It’s opening the door saying Satan come on in, tell me all your bad things, and let me listen to you and think it’s me, and think it’s my right. And even my experience at the Sears store at Christmas was provoking out of me that I was not willing to be discontent. Of course I have been. But I knew… It was a wonderful encounter with God. It was worth it to me, because He literally delivered me of it, killed something in me, really, permanently. He allowed something in me to be attacked, exposed and killed so I didn’t have to suffer from it. I don’t, I feel as you do, John. I don’t want anything but what is my heritage in Christ and my identity and my… I want all of that that is assigned to me. But He is so generous, there’s no… Jealousy is insane, because He has marvelous plans for every person, if we’ll fit into His order, His system, His plans, His ways. There’s just no limit to His goodness and His imagination for all of us. There’s no reason to be jealous. The only work is to find out what He has for you and receive it. So people who go to jealousy miss their lives, their destiny, and their God in it, their eternal reward. (J) If you stay there, yeah. (M) Hmhmm, yeah. But there is, there is such a remedy and I’m excited about it. I’m going to share it. Maybe we’ll do a podcast on the remedy when I get it all recorded. (J) I’m looking forward to next months CD, because, you know, it’s obviously they’re going to be holding hands with the last message “The Season Of Our Discontent.” Really, this is a part two almost. Yeah? (M) Yes it is. (J) So. I’m looking forward to it coming out. (M) Thank you.

One comment

A wise person, or at least one I considered so, told me that to be jealous was to fear losing that which you considered your own and that discontent could be the motivation for an endeavor to move higher.

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